Cite as: 532 U. S. 318 (2001)
Syllabus
(a) In reading the Fourth Amendment, the Court is guided by the traditional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures afforded by the common law at the time of the framing. E. g., Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927, 931. Atwater contends that founding-era common-law rules forbade officers to make warrantless misdemeanor arrests except in cases of "breach of the peace," a category she claims was then understood narrowly as covering only those nonfelony offenses involving or tending toward violence. Although this argument is not insubstantial, it ultimately fails. Pp. 326-345.
(1) Even after making some allowance for variations in the pre-founding English common-law usage of "breach of the peace," the founding-era common-law rules were not nearly as clear as Atwater claims. Pp. 327-335.
(i) A review of the relevant English decisions, as well as English and colonial American legal treatises, legal dictionaries, and procedure manuals, demonstrates disagreement, not unanimity, with respect to officers' warrantless misdemeanor arrest power. On one side, eminent authorities support Atwater's position that the common law confined warrantless misdemeanor arrests to actual breaches of the peace. See, e. g., Queen v. Tooley, 2 Ld. Raym. 1296, 1301, 92 Eng. Rep. 349, 352. However, there is also considerable evidence of a broader conception of common-law misdemeanor arrest authority unlimited by any breach-of-the-peace condition. See, e. g., Holyday v. Oxenbridge, Cro. Car. 234, 79 Eng. Rep. 805, 805-806; 2 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown 88. Thus, the Court is not convinced that Atwater's is the correct, or even necessarily the better, reading of the common-law history. Pp. 328-332.
(ii) A second, and equally serious, problem for Atwater's historical argument is posed by various statutes enacted by Parliament well before this Republic's founding that authorized peace officers (and even private persons) to make warrantless arrests for all sorts of relatively minor offenses unaccompanied by violence, including, among others, nightwalking, unlawful game playing, profane cursing, and negligent carriage driving. Pp. 333-335.
(2) An examination of specifically American evidence is to the same effect. Neither the history of the framing era nor subsequent legal development indicates that the Fourth Amendment was originally understood, or has traditionally been read, to embrace Atwater's position. Pp. 336-345.
(i) Atwater has cited no particular evidence that those who framed and ratified the Fourth Amendment sought to limit peace officers' warrantless misdemeanor arrest authority to instances of actual breach of the peace, and the Court's review of framing-era documentary
319
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007